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Topic: Electric Starter-ectomy (Read 913 times)

I took off my starter and the sprag and one of the starter gears as well as the solenoid. I left one of the gears because it looks like it retained a bearing that is installed from the center when the main cases are apart. All that stuff weighed in at 7 pounds so not worth it in terms of weight shavings but the real reason I did it is because I like to kick it to life and the sprag clutch was slipping and I didn't really want to deal with replacing it.

So to go along with the kick start-only, I just got my manual decompression valve in the mail. I decided to go with the cable operated variety. I hope to drop it off tomorrow with the head to my machinist friend to thread a hole for it. There is a nice flat spot on the right side of the head for it but looking at other pictures of heads off of bikes it looks like the valves are oriented torward that side so it might be tight. More pictures to follow.

I know, I know, I should have just bought an iron barrel but I really do like the UCE's extra ponies out of the box and every time I open the engine up I am amazed with how clean and tidy and well made all the parts are on the UCE.

I believe that flat spot is intended for Double Plugged IDM bikes. You should be ok if your guy gets the angle right. Did you remove the stock auto decomp ?

The idea is to get rid of the stock auto decomp because it sticks in the morning necessitating nursing the throttle for a minute and also because it doesn't decompress fast enough to get through compression when kickstarting in a hurry, like at a light.

I spoke to my machinist friend last night and he's on board and should know right away if he's up for it as soon as he sees the head. The trick is to drill from the combustion side and end up with the right angle on the outside for the valve or else drill from the outside and risk hitting the valve seats.

with the de-compressor in place maybe you could ditch the stock cams and carve some with a little more personality! good luck with your mod though,it seems like a good one to improve the engine reliability

Logged

"Glorious,stirring sight! The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! ... O bliss ! O poop poop ! Oh my! Oh my!" - Toad of Toad Hall.

The starter-ectomy is done. The main tricky part was getting the blanking plate to seal properly. I made it out of a 1/4 piece of aluminum and the part that it bolts down to on the engine casing is nice and flat and easy to do. Even though I took out the sprag and the gears I had to leave the middle starter gear as it retains it's bearing which is installed from the middle of the main cases. This project didn't warrant splitting the main cases. That gear sits about 1/16" proud of the opening of the case so I had to grind out the back of the blanking plate for it to sit flat over the gear (sorry I didn't take pictures.)

All-in-all a fairly simple operation but I am not a machinist, only a third rate mechanic at best, and my hats off to the likes of people like scooter bob and the folks at ACE who do the real magic stuff. I don't know how you do it.

Also, if you recall, my clutch used to make a squeeling noise when it was engaging and I found that after I took the left side cover off, the clutch nut was totally loose. That problem is now solved.

I am happy with the results but I must note that for anyone looking at this for a work around the starter sprag, The sprag is super easy to replace and I don't know if it was a worthwhile project just for the means of either reliability or weight-savings; but for me it's a look and feel thing of a kick-start only bike, so yeah, just plain silliness! And now I have the worlds only kick-start only fuel-injected motorcycle! The two don't seem to go together but fuel injected bikes are so easy to start the electric starter may never have been invented if fuel injection had always been around

Another note is that the two bolts that hold the starter on the right side go all the way through the main case and need replacing with shorter bolts to fill the holes. I discovered that the hard way when I got to work yesterday to find my engine and underside of the gas tank covered in oil!

I will be putting the manual decompressor on hold because my auto-decompression mechanism seems to be majically working like it's supposed to now. Probably just the warm weather. Enough blabbing for now. Time to ride.